SpaceX starship explodes again, FAA mandates investigation
During Thursday's flight, SpaceX's Starship exploded. This marks the second consecutive major failure as Elon Musk's rocket attempts to reach orbit. The internet is flooded with eyewitness recordings of the event.
The eighth test flight of Starship ended in failure, resulting in an explosion. The United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) promptly responded to the situation by briefly halting flights to major airports in Florida and rerouting others due to falling debris from space.
Furthermore, the agency informed TechCrunch that it requires SpaceX to conduct an investigation into this failure.
Starship rocket explosion
SpaceX launched the Starship using the Super Heavy booster, and everything proceeded correctly for the first eight minutes of the flight. The spacecraft successfully separated and headed into space, while the booster returned to the launch pad in Texas, where it was caught by the tower for the third time.
However, about eight minutes after launch, SpaceX's broadcast showed the loss of several Raptor engines on the ship. Onboard recordings revealed that the vehicle began to spin over the ocean.
The internet is flooded with recordings
"We just saw some engines go out. It looks like we are losing altitude control of the ship," said Dan Huot, SpaceX's communications manager, during the broadcast. "At this point, we have lost contact with the ship," he added.
Recordings on social media show that the ship disintegrated over the Bahamas and the Dominican Republic a few minutes later. The company posted on Platform X that it "immediately began coordination with safety officials to implement pre-planned contingency responses." You can see the spectacular moment of the explosion in the material below.
There are many more similar recordings. They show the remnants of the Starship rocket illuminating the sky.
SpaceX had planned to deploy four test Starlink satellites during this flight, representing a step towards using Starship for commercial missions. The company is expanding its space network by conducting tests at a rapid pace and learning from its successes and failures.
The failure occurred a few weeks after the seventh test flight, during which the Starship disintegrated over the Turks and Caicos Islands, causing the FAA to reroute flights in that area. SpaceX conducted an investigation, concluding that a fuel leak inside the ship caused fires and loss of communication before the rocket self-destructed.
